Kennedy assassination author and conspiracist Robert Groden says the city's out to get him. He may be right.

Eric Graf, from Phoenix, adopts a conspiratorial tone and wonders aloud, "Were they here on the original day?"

With some time to kill on a Saturday morning they have wandered down from their nearby hotel. Graf has been here before. He hasn't run into any shoulder-bag guys today. Asked if he was offended by them on earlier visits, he says he actually sort of misses them. "Personally I find them part of the experience."

Long offers, "Also, there's free speech."

Mark Graham

Every weekend at Dealey Plaza, Robert Groden sells books and
CDs based on the House Select Committee's finding that JFK was shot from the grassy knoll.

Details

What the rockers really like, they agree, is that the place itself is still raw and anxiously unsettled, making it more real and exciting.

And for that, even though they don't know it, the rockers can thank official Dallas, the cops, the museum, the people who want to have Groden arrested, who want to run off the shoulder bags and offer only "tasteful reflections." In a marvelous joke of unintended consequences, their efforts have helped make Dealey Plaza what it is on this brilliant Saturday—a black hole of conspiracy drawing every possible plot to its breast with such a powerful suck that finally nothing, not even light itself, can escape.

Speaking of which, before we leave Dealey Plaza some effort should be made to resolve the mystery of the hip-hop positive Syrian Freedom Group. Are they what they appear to be?

They do not look even remotely Syrian. Groden, of course, believes that they are agents of the Sixth Floor, sent here to drive him crazy and run off all his customers with their "damn Libyan rap music."

Knowing what we know, it's not out of the realm. Not this realm.

A lady who will identify herself only as Aubry is in the process of packing up the huge sound system in the pergola near Groden. She says the police have informed her that she can't operate the sound system while the re-enactment is going on. Under grueling interrogation by the Observer, she shrugs and admits she is not really all that into Syrian freedom. She was just hired to run the sound system for "the Syrian guy."

The Syrian guy.

She doesn't know his name. She jabs a thumb toward the statue of G.B. Dealey on the other side of the plaza.

Gathered at the foot of the statue are several men who could be Syrian. Clue: They are accompanied by multiple women in head scarves. One man in a suit seems to be a leader. He volunteers readily that he is for Syrian freedom.

Asked whether he is actually in league with the hip-hop positive people to drive Groden mad by playing loud Libyan rap music, he laughs out loud, but with a foreign-sounding laugh. "Oh, no, no!" He says he's paying the hip-hop people to set up and operate the sound system for his rally. "They probably are testing the sound system, so maybe they turned on some hip-hop. I don't know."

He says if and when the Syrian freedom demonstration ever gets off the ground, presumably after the re-enactment, the operators of the sound system will be provided with a CD of Syrian music, as they were when this same demonstration took place the previous weekend.

At first he is willing to give his name. "Ghassan," he says, helpfully spelling his first name for a reporter. But then he balks at giving a last name. "Just put a G as a last name and leave it like that," he says.

Let me just say this...I have been honored to have had many worldwide visitors allow me to show them the highlights of the Dallas we take for granted. I can absolutely say this: No matter if they were from Russia, France, China or Australia one common thread abounds between them all; they all want to see where that moment in time occurred and are still infatuated with the legacy in such a way that is disturbingly. The respect and interest is absolutely staggering for so many that had no sensable reason to exhibit any knowledge of, or deep reason for being there.

Here's the litmus test of 11/22/63: do you believe a mob-connected snake (Jack Ruby) was working or grieving when he stalked Oswald on 11/22, 11/23 and ultimately 11/24? Was Ruby so patriotic that he had to kill LHO to spare Jackie the torture of returning to Dallas to testify? Or was he working? Was he ordering red, white, and blue bunting with all the long-distance calls to Chicago and New Orleans in October '63? Or was he working? Figure out Ruby and the rest falls into place. Someday, the government will release it all...primarily to show future generations that they can, in fact, do what they want, when they want, to whoever they want. Up to, and including, killing the head of state in the middle of the day, in the middle of a major American city, in the middle of the street, in the middle of a crowd.

You guys just like to spout off your mouth with out doing any research. Oswald was a very poor marksmen and his co-soldiers state he had "maggies drawers" meaning he often couldn't even hit the target at all. Look it up and quite spouting lies.

Really? Do you belive the the US is the only country in the world that does not train 12 year olds to be assasins? Get a clue. Go stand on the grassy knoll and then tell me this was not a huge cover up.

Everyone is dead. Last time I checked dead people don't talk.

The National Guard is around the corner from where you live in any where USA. What do they do in there? Right under your nose?

Who I am Doesn't Matter, but hear what I say here. I was in the 6th. grade when J.F.K. was "MURDERED" in Dallas that day. I've heard that Russia did it, the Mafia did it, and that L.B.J. had a hand in it. But both 6th. grade classes went to the cafeteria, turned on the T.V. and sat and watched the President get shot over and over as they replayed the scene. I remember Jackie crawling out on the trunk of the car,and the news report saying that "HE" was shot from behind. Well, even a child of 12 at that time knows you don't go TOWARD danger, you go away from it. It didn't take me long to figure it out....SHE was getting a part of his skull. I mean the NEWS did report that J.F.K. had been SHOT from behind. I didn't see any body part of any one fly forward.Like the film showed..JFK SLUMPED FORWARD..THEN SUDDENLY FLEW BACKWARD his head seemed to hit the back of the seat. I wasn't as smart as those on the Warren Commission at the time but LIVE COVERAGE can't LIE. So if you still want to believe people trying to cover up the facts that a whole nation watched LIVE on LIVE NEWS COVERAGE. Then you're either STUPID, or you didn't see it, or you hadn't even been born yet. NUFF SAID.......

One of the more interesting aspects of someone like Robert Groden who believes in a conspiracy is the fact that they never subject the actual idea of conspiracy to critical analysis. As has been noted many times, including in comments here, you have to be fairly credulous to accept the existence of a conspiracy that has supposedly been air-tight (but for the valiant Grodens of the world) for almost half a century.

I am convience that Lee Oswald was involve with something but he didnt know what are who,he was just doing his part.you can tell this man was so confused in the dallas hallway's being led room to room,that all he saw was cameras and media he didnt even know the president had been shot! then when he had time to think,he realize he was being charge of shooting the president and this is when he started sayin he was just a (patsy).So in my mind the FBI, and secret service had a hand in it,ortherwise they(SS) would not "repeat" would not have called the agents off the back of Kennedy's limo comming out of the airport..I have watch all the viedos and all the witnesses testomy for years and it ashames me to think this country allow this to happen and to let the real killers get away with it.Realy how dumb can we pretend to be.

Mr. Groden is a good man who for a very long time has spoken out on the events surrounding the assassination of JFK. Is it because as he speaks about the case he is selling books and cd's? Is that not what is being done on the first floor of the Sixth Floor Museum?

Is it the selling of books or, is it his version of his story the city of Dallas is upset with?

Very true, Dealey Plaza is place of great pain for many people in my generation, but a greater pain is that after close to fifty years we still don't know the true facts of JFK's murder...

Leave Mr. Groden alone, is there not more important things for the City of Dallas to worry about....like crime.

For years, I believed all the conspiracy stuff about the assasination. The Zapruder film is tough to argue with - it sure looks like the fatal shot came from the front.

But, secrets are hard to keep. The more people who know the secret, the exponentially more difficult it becomes to keep it. The conspiracy theorists themselves tell us the conspiracy was huge, the cover-up even huger. It's been almost 50 years.How is it we know (really KNOW) nothing more than we did then?

Maybe it's the 9/11 conspiracy nuts who have soured me on anything conspiracy-related. Maybe I've just grown intellectually lazy on the subject. I don't know. But I just can't believe the theories any more.

That's the wonderful thing about all crackpot hypotheses. They all have that grain of truth at the center that never holds up under the harsh light of day, no matter how many miniscule coincidences and questions crop up.

Look, the federal government can't even deliver the mail. What makes anyone think that anyone involved would be capable of orchestrating this kind of coverup, lasting for more than 40 years, and involving thousands of people? It's just not plausible.

Sorry, Bob, but there is definitive evidence done by experts to prove that Oswald, an ex-military sniper, could easily take the shots. And, once you position the respective parties in the limo at the height and angle they were really at, the "magic bullet" disappears.

Get a life Don Abbott. You know so little about Jack Ruby, Oswald and the investigation of the events of that weekend.....Mob-connected snake? Ruby was NOT a nice person, but his connection to the mob was no more than yours Dufus. And I'll bet you are one of those fools who have wasted months claiming that President Obama is not a real American.

"LIVE COVERAGE can't LIE" but "Frank James" can. He could not have seen any film replayed "over and over" on live coverage because there were no TV news cameras rolling in Dealey Plaza, and the Zapruder film was only published later as still frames in Life magazine, and not shown on television until Robert Groden ran it on Geraldo Rivera's talk show back in the 1970s.

You are only stating your own opinion on this not any facts. Try reading what I recommended above and see if you think there has been no critical analysis applied to this issue. And the conspiracy was never "air-tight" - it leaks like a seeve, you just have to pay attention to those who talked, those who died because the talked, and those who were never listened to. Check out "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James W. Douglas (pub 2010), available in paperback at amazon.com and amazon.ca.

"Maybe it's the 9/11 conspiracy nuts who have soured me on anything conspiracy-related. Maybe I've just grown intellectually lazy on the subject. I don't know. But I just can't believe the theories any more."

So you'd rather just buy what the government spoon-feeds you? Yeah, that's a brilliant conclusion... As for 9/11, there's a mountain of evidence that contradicts the 9/11 commission report.

Do some research before you get "soured on anything conspiracy-related". If you can't do that, you have no right to be soured.

Try reading one of the newest and best JFK Assassination books - "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James W. Douglas (pub 2010). It is one of the best over view texts. It will revive your interest no doubt. Plus with the help of newly released government documents (under the auspices of the Assassination Records Review Board) as mandated by the JFK Act which forced US government agencies to release many assassination related documents and allows you to get a chilling glimpse of the big picture. Try it - you won't be dissapointed. Available on amazon.com and amazon.ca.

yeah, listen: the cia ain't the FUCKING post office, pal. can you even begin to comprehend the dimensions of that FUCKING agency, or the nsa, for that matter? you wanna talk nothing's possible, when EVERYTHING is possible. come join the post-nuclear age, won't you?

I left something out of my first response that is quite important. Oswald was not a trained sniper. He was a radioman who'd been trained to fire a rifle as part of his basic training. The rifle on which he was trained was much easier to use than the rifle found in the building. He was never even trained to shoot at moving targets. After his initial training, moreover, Oswald fell out of practice, so much so that by his last test in 1959, he barely qualified.

When asked about Oswald's shooting abilities, a Marine Corps Colonel told the Warren Commission he was a"poor shot."

Baywolfe, if you'd actually look into the case, you'd find that the army test-fired the assassination rifle for the Warren Commission, and were not able to have ANY of their 14 rapid-fired shots hit as close to the center of their head and shoulders targets as two of the three shots supposedly fired by Oswald, even though they were allowed practice shots, when Oswald was not, and even though they were firing on stationary targets. In short, NONE of the top shooters to fire Oswald's rifle came close to replicating his supposed feat, and anyone telling you otherwise is blowing smoke.

Oliver, how did you know I'm a mobster? Phone tap? President Obama, unfortunately, is all to real to all Americans. Oh, and let me guess, you were probably born less than 30 years ago...in some economic backwater like Wichita or Corpus.

is that crack you're smokin' any good? any major dude could tell you that oswald was a first class marksman. of course he had help (whether he was even aware of this is'nt relevant) and that's really the crucible of this whole sorry episode. and yes, nixon was in town. but then was'nt bush in texas, or en route, when reagan blew the plan and survived? to say nothing of the lennon assassination. just sayin'..